Excel Parking and Debt Recovery - help

Snakes_Belly

I noticed you replaced quite a big section I'd put in regarding my actions after paying etc, I'm guessing you think its not relevant to put in right?

I think that it is important to drill down to the main points. Judges only have a short time for reading each case.

Would you say to replace exhibit AE-01 with the up to date image you've provided, i've noticed that it does actually show more signage than the original one I used but do you still think its not enough to stand?

The signage at the entrance to the car park forms the contract so I would use the image that shows the signage in the worst light.  That said I don't think that signage is going to be a major issue at your hearing because you were aware that it was a pay car park and that you needed to input your VRN.

You actually complied with the terms of their contract.  Which is where the Jolley V Carmel case comes into play. You do not need to know the full facts of the case just the principle in that you should not be penalised for using your best endeavours to comply with their terms.   

Snakes_Belly

Adam_ said:

Snakes_Belly said:

Jolley V Carmel.  Jurisdiction	England & Wales
Court	Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
Judge	LORD JUSTICE CHADWICK
Judgment Date	10 July 2000
Judgment citation (vLex)	[2000] EWCA Civ J0710-10
Docket Number	A3/2000/2329
Date	10 July 2000

Where would you put this? As an exhibit?

Yes if a transcript cannot be found before you send off the WS. It does show that this was an Court of Appeal decision.

Snakes_Belly

I asked for SAR which they sent a while back, this has supposedly all the submission into the machine from that day, would you like me to send it?

Yes please. Post it up on here so others can comment. Let's see everything that they have sent but particularly the VRN list.

Snakes_Belly

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6126609/excel-claim-defence-advice/p12

This was a case that was heard at Walsall. You only need to read the court report on 26/8/2021. This is something that you will have to watch as it can mean that the hearing is rescheduled, Excel are particularly bad at losing documents, not sending documents to the rep or court and saying that they have not received documents from you. 

You have no control over their poor administration but you need to make sure that all your paperwork is in the right place at the right time. 

Adam_

Snakes_Belly said:

Adam_ said:

Snakes_Belly said:

Jolley V Carmel.  Jurisdiction	England & Wales
Court	Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
Judge	LORD JUSTICE CHADWICK
Judgment Date	10 July 2000
Judgment citation (vLex)	[2000] EWCA Civ J0710-10
Docket Number	A3/2000/2329
Date	10 July 2000

Where would you put this? As an exhibit?

Yes if a transcript cannot be found before you send off the WS. It does show that this was an Court of Appeal decision.

Ok great thank you, i'll see if i can find a transcript in the meantime, with my last date to submit my WS (27th Dec - 14 days before 10th Jan) and obviously christmas fast approaching, i want to get this WS submitting asap so its one less stress before christmas.

Adam_

Snakes_Belly said:

I asked for SAR which they sent a while back, this has supposedly all the submission into the machine from that day, would you like me to send it?

Yes please. Post it up on here so others can comment. Let's see everything that they have sent but particularly the VRN list.

here is the list i was sent

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nCNjGxz-cN3qn6uTlFKNcicG-VW5bYWZ/view?usp=share_link

Adam_

Not_A_Hope said:

You have addressed the main issue in your WS and hopefully a fair minded judge would agree and dismiss the claim. However you have not included any evidence to support the rest of the template defence. This could reference lack of signage, failing to comply with their ATA Code of Practice, abuse of process by including unfair costs. Have a read of your defence points and borrow /amend some of the WS from @aphex007 to address the additional points.

I planned to add some of this into the WS from @aphex007 WS, however its a bit over my head as to what would be relevant to my case without making it overly complex for me to explain if I got questioned on this

Abuse of process - the quantum

26. This Claimant continues to pursue a hugely disproportionate fixed sum (routinely added per PCN) despite knowing that this is now banned. It is denied that the quantum sought is recoverable (authorities: two well- known ParkingEye cases where modern penalty law rationale was applied). Attention is drawn to paras 98,

100, 193, 198 of ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC67. Also ParkingEye Ltd v Somerfield Stores
Ltd ChD [2011] EWHC 4023(QB) where the parking charge was £75, discounted to £37.50 for prompt payment. Whilst £75 was reasonable, HHJ Hegarty (sitting at the High Court; later ratified by the CoA) held in paras 419-428 that unspecified 'admin costs' inflating it to £135 'would appear to be penal', i.e. unrecoverable.

27. My stance regarding this punitive add-on is now underpinned by the Government, who have now stated that attempts to gild the lily by adding 'debt recovery costs' were 'extorting money'. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities ('DLUHC') published in February 2022, a statutory Code of Practice, found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-parking-code-of-practice.

28. Whilst it is known that the rogue parking industry have just filed Judicial Reviews and have delayed the new Code of Practice (as per paragraph 27), the Government is pressing ahead and has conceded to undertake a final Public Consultation and Impact Assessment, as the latter was missing from their rationale. Going by the damning words of the Minister, and the fact that two consultations and an industry and consumer represented Steering Group have already informed the DLUHC's decision over the past two years, I believe there is no

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Claim number xxxx Mr xxxxx (Defendant) Hearing date: xx/xx/xxxx

reason to think the Government's view will significantly change about adding unconscionable costs that were not incurred and which merely exist as a mechanism to enhance already-doubled parking charges, to fuel the roboclaim race to court and to side-step the £50 legal fees cap set in the Small Clams Track.

29. Adding debt recovery/costs/damages/fees (however described) onto a parking charge is now banned. In a section called 'Escalation of costs' the incoming statutory Code of Practice says: "The parking operator must not levy additional costs over and above the level of a parking charge or parking tariff as originally issued."

1. This particular Claimant's legal team routinely continues to pursue a sum on top of each PCN, despite indisputably knowing that these are banned costs. The claim is exaggerated by inclusion of a false, wholly disproportionate and unincurred 'damages' enhancement of £60 upon which the Claimant seems to have also added interest at 8% calculated from the date of parking. Clearly an abuse of the court process.

2. The Code's Ministerial Foreword is unequivocal about abusive existing cases such as the present
   claim: "Private firms issue roughly 22,000 parking tickets every day, often adopting a labyrinthine system of misleading and confusing signage, opaque appeals services, aggressive debt collection and unreasonable fees designed to extort money from motorists."

32. The DLUHC consulted for over two years and considered evidence from a wide range of stakeholders. Almost a fifth of all respondents to the 2021 Technical Consultation called for false fees to be scrapped altogether; this despite the parking industry flooding both public consultations, some even masquerading as consumers. The DLUHC saw through this and in a published Response (also in February 2022), they identified that some respondents were 'parking firms posing as motorists'. Genuine consumer replies pointed out that successful debt recovery does not trigger court proceedings and the debt recovery/robo-claim law firms operate on a 'no win, no fee' basis, and are effectively Trade Body Board member colleagues passing motorists' data around electronically and seeking to inflate the sum of the parking charge, which in itself is already sufficiently enhanced.

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Claim number xxxx Mr xxxxx (Defendant) Hearing date: xx/xx/xxxx

1. This Claimant has not incurred any additional costs (not even for reminder letters) because the full parking charge itself more than covers what the Supreme Court in Beavis called a 'letter chain' business model that generates a healthy profit.

2. The driver did not agree to pay a parking charge, let alone unknown costs, which were not quantified in prominent text on alleged signage. It comes too late when purported debt recovery fees are only quantified after the event.

3. These are now banned costs which the Claimant has neither paid nor incurred and were not quantified in prominent lettering on alleged signage. Introducing the purported 'costs' add-on in later debt demands is a moneymaking exercise to extract a high fixed sum from weaker motorists and came far too late. I did not agree to it.

4. Whilst the new Code and Act is not retrospective, it was enacted due to the failure of the self-serving BPA & IPC Codes of Practice. The Minister is indisputably talking about existing (not future) cases when declaring that 'recovery' fees were 'designed to extort money'. A clear steer for the Courts.

37. This overrides mistakes made in the appeal cases that the parking industry try to rely upon (Britannia v Semark-Jullien, One Parking Solution v Wilshaw, Vehicle Control Services v Ward and Vehicle Control

Services v Percy). Far from being persuasive, regrettably these one-sided appeals were findings by Circuit Judges who appeared to be inexperienced in the nuances of private parking law and were led in one direction by Counsel for parking firms, and the litigant-in-person consumers lacked the wherewithal to appeal further.

38. It is pertinent to note that the Britannia v Semark-Jullien appeal judgment by HHJ Parkes criticised the District Judges at Southampton, for apparently not having enough evidence to conclude that Britannia 'knew' that their added costs were abusive (unincurred, unpaid and unjustified). Unbeknown to HHJ Parkes, of course all District Judges deal with template, generic evidence and arguments from parking operators every week, and BPA member firms including Britannia, certainly had been told this by Judges up and down the Country for many years. And the decision and words used by the DLUHC show that DJ Grand and DJ Taylor were right all

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Claim number xxxx Mr xxxxx (Defendant) Hearing date: xx/xx/xxxx

along. As was HHJ Jackson in Excel v Wilkinson (not appealed - see Exhibit xx-16) where she went into great detail about this abuse.

39. The Semark-Jullien case is now unreliable going forward and is fully distinguished now that the Government has at last stepped in and exposed and published the truth. This Claimant indisputably has knowledge (and always had knowledge) that they have not paid a penny in debt recovery costs, nor incurred any additional costs that the £100 parking charge is not designed to more than cover. The abuse is now clearly established and a new judgment re-stating this position, in the light of the damning words in the Foreword and the Explanatory Document published alongside the Code of Practice and stating (for the avoidance of doubt) the knowledge that District Judges have from years of experience of seeing these template enhanced claims and telling this Claimant to stop bringing exaggerated parking claims to court, would be welcomed to bring much- needed clarity for consumers and Judges across England and Wales.

40. In case this Claimant tries to rely upon those old cases, significant errors were made. Evidence - including unclear signage and Codes of Practice - was either ignored, even when in evidence at both
hearings (Wilshaw, where the Judge was also oblivious to regulatory DVLA KADOE rules requiring landowner

authority) or the judgment referred to the wrong rules, with one Judge seeking out the inapplicable BPA Code after the hearing and using it erroneously (Percy). In Ward, a few seconds' emergency stop out of the control of the driver, was inexplicably aligned with Beavis. The learned Judges were led in one direction by Counsel for parking firms, and were not in possession of the same level of facts and evidence as the DLUHC. 

Not_A_Hope

I cannot find your revised WS with the very excellent comments from Snakes_Belly. Adding the abuse of process section is a good idea. If the judge somehow manages to find in favour of the PPC they should then be minded to disregard any of the additional fake add ones.

I would also recommend you add a section requesting your allowed costs for the hearing. The PPC seeing that it may cost them even more may decide to discontinue. Your costs are capped at £95 plus travel / parking. Please make a note to ask for these costs at the conclusion of the hearing if you are successful. So many people forget. 

Coupon-mad

Adam_ said:

Snakes_Belly said:

I asked for SAR which they sent a while back, this has supposedly all the submission into the machine from that day, would you like me to send it?

Yes please. Post it up on here so others can comment. Let's see everything that they have sent but particularly the VRN list.

here is the list i was sent

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nCNjGxz-cN3qn6uTlFKNcicG-VW5bYWZ/view?usp=share_link

Anything useful there? We have no idea what number plate you are looking for and what that machine log shows you that helps your case?

Adam_

Not_A_Hope said:

I cannot find your revised WS with the very excellent comments from Snakes_Belly. Adding the abuse of process section is a good idea. If the judge somehow manages to find in favour of the PPC they should then be minded to disregard any of the additional fake add ones.

I would also recommend you add a section requesting your allowed costs for the hearing. The PPC seeing that it may cost them even more may decide to discontinue. Your costs are capped at £95 plus travel / parking. Please make a note to ask for these costs at the conclusion of the hearing if you are successful. So many people forget. 

I haven't posted it yet, I wanted to make sure I got everything in first before posting a few amended WS but I can post it if you'd like to see where I'm at so far?

I've added Snakes_Belly's comments which are brilliant, I'll also add the abuse of process section but I feel that whole section might be a bit too much.

I didn't know whether to add the request for allowed costs but if you think its a good idea I'll add that in too.

Cheers